Category Archives: Minecraft

What a great day. I slept until 9AM and got out of bed and Luke was already up, goofing around in his crib. The Saturday morning ritual commenced with pancakes and Care Bears. I actually had zero obligations today. Well… I did have to work on a website for somebody, but that only took about 15 minutes.

Biebs has been bugging me to play Hexxit, a Minecraft mod pack with heavy emphasis on adventuring. Today I finally got the opportunity. At first I pretty much dove right in. I made a wooden sword and started rolling through some of the light dungeons near the spawn. I promptly got my butt kicked. So at that point I decided I needed to establish a stronghold and build up some resources. There’s a TON to do and a ton you can do in this version of Minecraft. And I’m excited to dive into it.

I’ve been enjoying Animal Crossing: New Leaf to a great extent. With only one big gripe… there’s only been the fishing pole, net or shovel for sale at Nookling’s since I started the game. I really need my slingshot, watering can, and axe. It bugs me to no end as I’ve seen about six presents floating overhead so far and no way to get them.

This is the first Animal Crossing game since the first that really feels different. The biggest difference is you get to be the mayor as Tortimer has retired to a tropical island. It’s cool because you get to decide in what order you want to enhance your town. It definitely would benefit from multiple players as many of the projects are pretty expensive. Right now I’m working on getting my house filled out with more room, so that soaks up all my bells. But there will be plenty of time to get to it all. Animal Crossing is a long term dedication.

I’d really been craving a game of this type too. Something you can build on incrementally. You end up feeling pretty invested in games like this after you’ve been playing off and on for a couple years. You have your favorite residents, the collections you’re trying to complete and all the different holidays you want to check in on. We even used Animal Crossing as our official New Year’s Eve countdown!

All of the holiday travels are done. And they weren’t without some eventfulness. We got all loaded up to head to Kansas City for Christmas with Andrea’s family, that’s when I noticed a steady stream of antifreeze dripping from underneath the Jeep. It was coming out quick enough that I knew we weren’t going to try taking it. I looked it over quickly and couldn’t exactly deduce where the leak was coming from, so Andrea, frustrated, loaded all our gear into the Cutlass instead which made the trip without issue.

Old Water Pump Removed

New pump installed!

When we got back home Thursday, I looked the Jeep over a bit more and it looked like it was leaking from the gasket. Which meant the pump had to come off, which in turn meant, might as well replace the pump. Long story short: I have learned never to be shocked by what you find when you buy a used vehicle. The water pump had a HOLE in it! Like an actual hole through the pump. Sometime before we bought the Jeep someone had dabbed some RTV sealer over the hole. It’s amazing that it lasted over a year. But now we have a new pump and thermostat and it seems like it’s working great and doesn’t leak a drop. Even got it put back together in time to head to Cimarron on that Saturday! Not too bad for the old KartMaster’s Garage.

Bright red amp power cable and fuse.

Also did some work on the Jeep that was more, “scheduled”. For Christmas I got Andrea a new amp and speaker box. We already had the speaker which is what made the project affordable. It was quite a bit of work, but I’m glad I did it right. Had the front seat out and all the interior trim apart on the passenger side to run the power cable. Ended up breaking off one of the bolts that holds the seat down because it was siezed up, so that won’t be fun to drill out and fix… but I’ll get it done eventually. The finished product is the only thing you can really see is the power cable under the hood, and the speaker in the back. No ugly wires showing anywhere. Real clean.

So that kinda gets caught back up to today. Got a little more snow, but just about an inch or so, nothing that will slow anything down. Maybe enough for Luke and I to go play in tomorrow morning!

I mentioned in my last post a project I’ve been working on in Minecraft. Since my quarry is always working when I’m away, I’m able to gather enough resources to build this thing. You might recognize it.

Each block represents 1 pixel of the BIG castle you find at the end of Worlds X-3 in the original Super Mario Bros. I originally planned on scaling this down, but it wasn’t looking right, so I just built it to its highest fidelity. Though I didn’t quite expect it to get this big. I also originally planned to translate this into 3-D. But I quickly realized how daunting it was going to be to create it in 2-D form. This castle has around 16,000 blocks. All placed by hand. Math that I should have done BEFORE I started building….